Mad Cow Nightmare (21 page)

Nola stammered, “I’m not going south yet, I have to find my son, I told you. We got separated. We have a place to live.” They didn’t exactly, but she wasn’t going to tell this man. It would be only a step from Irish traveller who beat her daughter to Irish traveller he’d read about in the newspaper. The one who killed her man and was spreading some kind of cancer. “I have to be on my way,” she lied. “My son is waiting for me in the next town.”

“You haven’t finished your soup,” the woman said, standing up with Nola.

“I’ve had all I can eat. Thank you, but I got to go.” Nola started out the door. The man was still sitting there, watching her, he looked like he was thinking hard. She went outside, moving carefully to avoid suspicion. The woman trotted after her with the loaf of bread. “Edward doesn’t like it anyhow, take it.” Then, “Oh, your rosary beads! I’ll get them from Jennifer.”

Nola saw the man reappear in the doorway. “Never mind,” she said, and went off toward the road. The man was still standing there, staring at her. He wasn’t done with his questions. Before long he’d put it all together.

“Thief,” the child yelled from a window. “Stealing our food. You ought to be in jail!”

Nola walked rapidly now, around a bend in the road, then veered off into a copse of trees. She’d seen a shiny black automobile in the driveway—she didn’t want the man coming after her.

In the underbrush she threw up the bread and soup. She thought she’d spewed blood, but discovered it was bits of pimento from the olives. But she had the rest of the loaf, it would carry her through two or three days. She didn’t want to take from anyone’s garden again. She didn’t want to go into anyone’s house. She would have to live on berries and mushrooms, though she didn’t know which ones were poisonous. She wished she had Maggie with her, Maggie knew herbs and plants. With Maggie she’d be able to survive.

But Maggie was back in Vermont, and Nola was headed west. She’d have to take a chance and get rides now and then, she could never walk that far. But she’d get there.

“I’m coming, Keeley,” she said aloud, lifting her face to the sky. The sun hammered her temples with its fiery knuckles.

Chapter Sixteen

James Perlman lifted the edge of the curtain to see who was banging on his door. He didn’t like what he saw. It was a pair of agents from the Department of Agriculture. What did they want with him? He’d told his story to the local police—the Willmarth woman had argued him into it. Luckily the police were single-minded about the missing woman: they didn’t ask about himself, other than his name and current occupation.

But Christ, his occupation was the problem, he discovered, when he let them inside the kitchen—a man and a woman, like a couple of walking badges, hardly human with those painted-on smiles. Could they inspect his sheep? Were the sheep U.S. born—or had he imported any from abroad? Did he know those sheep were suspect, might have ingested contaminated feed? Did he know about the farm in East Warren, the slaughtered sheep, the suspect ewes?

“But my sheep are healthy,” he cried, standing up because they refused to sit down—their badges crying “Power, we have Power over you.” “You can see for yourself. Come on and I’ll show you.”

The Smiles went along, seeming to agree with him, to sympathize—that was what Power was, that aura of benevolence. He knew it well. Power was the female supervisor in that Buffalo hospital: a large, pickle-faced woman with dots of rouge on either cheek and a bugle-like voice that split his eardrums when she spoke. It was she who’d walked in on him when he was with that woman in the recovery room. It was the first time—the first time it had happened! Even as he mounted the patient he hated himself, told himself it would be the only time. He’d watched the woman when she came into the hospital for her colonoscopy. He knew her to be a sleep-around woman, married to an older man who couldn’t do anything for her—James wasn’t taking advantage, no. She would have given it to him free—she as good as offered when he asked if she was finished dressing. And she said she was finished. But then she stood grinning at him, a big lusty orange-haired female, her pale blue johnny open to the world. Then they heard a female nurse coming, and she tied the loose strings of the johnny and he bent to his job: attaching the IV to her arm.

The feds were talking about the weather, the heat, the drought. Wells were going dry in nearby towns. It was too bad, it made people cross and grumpy. “You can’t think we like doing this, taking and testing animals,” the female agent said, “but we have to think of the greater good. We can’t have this disease taking over the country. Your small sacrifice could save a nation.”

The woman was looking at him closely now. He wondered what she might know. That dead man, Ritchie, had known about the hospital incident, James was sure of it. But Ritchie was dead, he wouldn’t talk. James wondered where this woman came from. He didn’t dare ask. His offense was on record if someone wanted to do the research. The supervisor had caught him in the act. Then the patient had started to wake up from the sedative and she was smiling—James was sure she was smiling to see him. She wanted it, she’d asked for it.

“We’ve traced a pair of suspect ewes to you,” the man accused, “brought from a farm up in Greensboro.” He thrust his pimpled chin in James’s face like it was James’s fault, all that paperwork and tracing his sheep from Scotland to Greensboro to Branbury.

“I had bought a pair, yes,” James said, “but I sent them back when I heard about the contamination. My sheep here are healthy—I can show you their papers.” He’d bought the pair because East Friesian sheep were famous for their dairy production. Anyway, the ones he’d bought were not from the same Belgium farm as the East Warren or Greensboro ones. The feds were painting everyone with the same brush. You lived in Belgium, had sheep— therefore they were sick. He despised it, he despised that kind of irrationality, that prejudice. When the hospital supervisor blabbed about her discovery, the red dots in her cheeks like strobe lights, everyone had shunned him. He was a pariah, an object of hate and suspicion. He’d wanted to kill that officious head nurse. She was jealous, he’d told himself. Christ, no one would want
her.

The feds were examining his sheep: probing, judging. For once, the smiles left their faces; they couldn’t find anything wrong. Finally they shook his hand, out there by the pasture fence. “This is just a preliminary visit,” they said. “You’ll hear from us. We have to be overly cautious, you understand.”

James watched them walk away, talking to one another, laughing. The woman had a big butt, she was wiggling it—she was no better than the patient in the Buffalo hospital. James liked his women small and compact. Like Maureen, his ex. Maureen had stuck with him through all the hooplah; then when they came to Vermont and began a new life—she left him. Angry tears crowded his eyes, thinking of it. Even his daughter out in California rarely called.

Christ but he felt alone now. Thirty acres and two dozen sheep and no one to talk to. No one in the whole neighborhood, in fact— though to tell the truth, there were few he’d really want to sit down and have a drink with. Not those kooky lesbians with the horses. Not that crazy beekeeper, Gwen, who grew the marijuana and nightshade and asked to keep bees on
his
farm—he’d told her where to go! Not the Willmarth woman with her silly bovines named Jane Eyre and Elizabeth and Oprah. (James never named his sheep, why would he?) Christ, but there were a lot of weirdos in this small town! He hated that Willmarth woman—hated her for letting that crew of thieves camp on her land.

Hated her for bringing all this suspicion on him and his sheep.

It was time to do something about that woman. But what? Letter in the local rag? Phone calls? Anonymous calls? He didn’t know, he couldn’t think—he was too upset from the agents’ visit. But the public should know what the dairy farmer had done. He’d think of something. She wouldn’t get away with it.

There were still tears in his eyes. He prided himself on not giving in, even when they threw the book at him in the hospital. But here he was, blubbering away like a baby. He blew his nose hard into a Kleenex, then picked out the rest of the tissues, one by one, and shredded them. Threw them into the air, where the wind picked them up like bits of chipped ice.

* * * *

Henrietta was reading aloud from the manuscript of her lesbian romance novel. She had the heroine, a sexy Rubenesque female with flaming red hair, lying naked on her bed. Henrietta loved the color red—her bedroom was furnished with a red carpet, red print wallpaper, red curtains with tiny red roses climbing and embracing. Her heroine looked up, smiling, plump arms draped over her head, when Jalousie walked in. “ ‘Jalousie, is that you?’ Rubena asked.”

“Who?” said Franny.

“Jalousie. I changed the name. It was Maria, but Maria’s such a common name. I need something more metaphoric, you know, a name to suggest character. Jalousie’s jealous because Rubena went to that bar with Ivy, and Jalousie found them there together, sipping out of the same martini glass.”

“Oh,” said Franny, who was trying to make an omelet out of Egg Beaters. She’d lately discovered her cholesterol was high, and with all the anguish she’d been going through she was worried about heart attack. Her mother and grandmother had both died at the age of sixty-eight and Franny was taking no chances. She’d visited a naturopath who prescribed an over-the-counter drug called Red Yeast Rice; she swallowed a caplet every day now, hoping to ward off the inevitable. It turned her urine canary yellow, and that was interesting.

Henrietta settled herself in her red cotton nightie in the kitchen rocker and read from her manuscript. “ ‘Ivy’s a wimp,’ Jalousie said, pointing a wicked finger at Rubena, who was standing there in the driveway, holding the bridle of her beloved bay mare. The mare had been stolen—”

“Wait a minute,” Franny said. “Where did this bay mare come from? You said Rubena was a nursery school teacher. You keep changing names and occupations and you’ll never make sense. Besides, you’re stealing my story—”

“That’s what writers do. Something happens in their lives and they add it to the manuscript. A stolen mare is dramatic stuff.”

“I thought this was a romance, not a mystery.”

“Well I’m thinking of changing it to romantic suspense. It’ll sell better in today’s market. And when they prove it was that Nola killed that man that stole your mare—”

“You think it was Nola, do you? Look, Hen, Ruth Willmarth said Nola’s a small woman. And that Ritchie was pretty big— around five-ten, she said, and all muscle, you know—the yukky good-ole-boy kind.” Franny flipped the eggs and they came down in the pan with a slap. The grease shot over into the next burner.

“Sure, it was a crime of passion. I figure he hit her for the last time—that’s what Irish male travellers do. They drink and then they hit their women. That’s what that NEC documentary showed.”

“Media hype—they’re out for sensation. I’m betting on the uncle. Did you see that uncle when he came to Ruth’s?” When Henrietta shook her head, “Well, I did. And there’s something slippery about him. My hackles went right up. You see, I caught him in a slip-up. He introduced himself to me and I said—you know how I like getting right to the point—”

“Don’t I know.”

“Yes, well, I said, ‘Who’s tending the farm while you’re gone—three days now, is it?’ I mean, I didn’t know it was three days, I just guessed. And he didn’t argue. He said he had a good hired man to do the work—cows have to be milked anyway, even though they’re in quarantine—”

“Franny, get to the point, please. How is that a slip-up?”

“Hen, think for once. Think! It means he was here the Thursday night when that Ritchie fellow got murdered. The uncle could’ve done it. When I said the word ‘Ritchie,’ a certain expression came over his face. Oh yes, you doubting Thomas, it did! The uncle was afraid of Ritchie. Dead or alive, I’m telling you!”

“How’s Ritchie going to hurt him if he’s dead?”

“Oh God, Henrietta, you’re so dense.” The eggs were burning in the pan and it was all Henrietta’s fault. Franny sighed and turned them out onto a plate anyway. She’d have to eat them charred. She shoved a piece of bread down into the toaster.

Henrietta said, “Answer me, please.”

Franny turned to face her, hands on her denim hips. “Because, dummy, he killed him. That’s my theory. If he killed him he’ll go to prison. For life! Or else fry in the chair. And some smart reporter will dig out the story behind it. Maybe the uncle stole Ritchie as a baby from some rich family and Ritchie found out and the uncle didn’t want him to talk. Remember the Lindbergh baby? One theory is the father or a close relative stole that kid.”

Henrietta snorted. “Who’d want to steal that hairy old Ritchie? You see the picture in the papers? Yuk. Anyway, my bet’s on that Nola woman. Never mind the uncle. It was Nola.”

Franny was disgusted with her partner’s obtuseness. She marched over, leaned two hands on Henrietta’s rocker, halted its rocking. “I saw Ritchie, remember? I’m the one who found him. No small woman like Nola could’ve strangled him like that with the reins. Not a big-muscled fellow like that.”

Henrietta pushed out her bottom lip and stared back at her partner. “What about your darling Lady Macbeth—’unsex me here!’ ho ho ho? What about that ferocious Emilia in
Othello?
You get a woman mad enough she can do anything. I could kill if anything happened to you.”

Franny sucked in a breath, taken by surprise. She stared back at her partner. “Oh Hen, you idiot, you darling. I do think you would. And so would I.” She leaned down to pull Henrietta up out of the rocker and give her a hug. The manuscript went flying, and Henrietta complained, but Franny just laughed and kept hugging.

The women were putting the manuscript back together, page by page, when a knock came at the door. Franny said, “Shit. Who’s that?” She yelled, “Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there i’ the name o’ Beelzebub?”

It was two men—big men, the good-ole-boy type that Franny abhorred. They were dressed in dirty gray workpants and cheap blue shirts. They wouldn’t appreciate the greeting from
Macbeth.
Beyond in the driveway was something that looked like a horse van. Not her horse van. This one belonged, she saw from the emblem on the side door, to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Her hackles were really up now. She knew why the feds were here; she’d been warned. They were going nuts, they were rounding up all the farms in the neighborhood.